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Google Terminates Lively
FornaxChemica writes "In a surprise move, Google announced today, both on-site and in its blog, that it will permanently shut down its 3D virtual world, Lively, by the end of the year. This makes Lively one of Google's few scrapped products, and one of the most short-lived, too, barely lasting 6 months. No official reason was given, only that Google wants to 'prioritize [its] resources and focus more on [its] core search, ads and apps business.' Lively might have taken too much and given back too little, even by Google's standards."
...They should change the name in Deadely.
Google wants to prioritize his resources?
Well, good for "him."
I don't care why you're posting AC
The odd gender usage is a mis-quote:
TFS:
prioritize his resources and focus more on his core search, ads and apps business
TFA:
prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business
Google seemed to be surfing the Second Life wave...
..as this idea was laughed at multiple times on slashdot;)
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/10/1428221
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/09/1210218
No, srsly. Good by, Lively. Of all Google betas, this one has stinker written on it from the start. I have a reasonably fast PC, memory and internet connection, and Lively was a dog! A one-legged dog trying to run in the 100 yd dash.
Maybe instead of a multi-user interactive world, they can turn search results into 3D experience. You enter your search term and a cloud of results appear. You move about, click on a result to see the page, or click on it to get a different set of search results. Efficient? No. High Eye-Candy factor? Yes.
Bearded Dragon
Maybe the fact that nobody's ever *heard* of this obscure Google service is part of the reason it hasn't been successful.
If you're just going to outright shit-can it, why not open-source it? At least then people can benefit from the energy you put into it instead of just throwing that all away.
"Software is like sex; it's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
Integrating virtual worlds with the web, or adding a new level to the communities you build around a site are things that should take off in some moment, not sure when, or if lively's implementation was the right one.
Probably something similar will appear shortly, or exist already, at least if the biggest problem of lively wasn't of the concept but that it dont fit in google's main focus.
An entire 3D chat world is a pretty huge expense (even with Google ads revenue) just to have a bunch of immature users telling each other "a/s/l?" and "ur gey".
"Deadely" shoud be a tag for "cancelled for spending too much with no visible benefits".
I've never tried lively, but I did give Second Life (with it's rather amazing content creation and scripting abilities) a try. The way I see it there's one major obstacle to these worlds: The "ghost town effect".
It's very resource intensive to simulate a 3D world, especially a vast one. Making the world big is eeexpeeensive, and the power required to run an arbitrary world is huge.
With MMORPGs people are paying each month, and a lot of the on screen action relates to NPCs. In something like Second Life every character is a real person with associated lag etc. It's also impossible to optimize a user generated world like a game, which imposes certains limits within a level.
All in all, Second Life at least is a huge world with comparatively small amounts of people scattered all over. The world just doesn't seem "right" when you go exploring, and most areas are empty. Sure, people gather here and there, but overall it feels like the tech just isn't there yet...
.: Max Romantschuk
And don't you forget it!
> Then again, so was going outside, soap, and leaving the basement.
"Leaving the basement IS going outside. What's he talking about?"
"hmm"
"I should make a post pointing that clear mistake... clickity post reply... Let's see... how to point the mista... waaaaaait a second..."
OUTSIDE THE ENTIRE HOUSE?!
WELLLLSHIEEEEEEEEE!
Kudos to you, Mike Elgan, for your keen insight.
and their client program, so I never tried it either
Those resources are better used porting sketchup to linux. You know, after Duke Nukem 3 is out..
when I play a dope melody. Anything less than the best is a felony.
Ah, the classics.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
It's as if a million voices cried out and then went: "Lively? What's that?"
Seriously, a knock off of Second-Life? What were they thinking. SL is pointless enough, did anyone there really think that this was going to be a goer?
There is this obsession with 3D worlds, computer interfaces, or file managers. People are convinced that just because something is technically more complex and sophisticated that it must be better. People keep telling us that soon we will be using voice controlled 3d AI interfaces, while missing the fact that none of these things actually make life easier. Why should I have to use a 3D world just to talk to someone? Why use a video phone when I just want to talk, not see their face?
Just because voice recognition is more sophisticated than a keyboard doesn't mean that it is intrinsically better.
The TV didn't kill the radio star. No matter how much more technically complex it might be, you can't watch TV while driving the car or walking down the street.
Paul Leader
I wonder if they'd be willing to turn it over to the open-source community? Just host it on google code and let people go wild.
We've learned a lot about how users interact in rich social environments,
It was all just a test so that the hardcore geeks there could learn how to go to clubs and bars and not be completely awkward.
Yup. How they expected to compete with Second Life with a Windows-only client I don't know. Good riddance.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Too cold, man!
This makes Lively one of Google's few scrapped products...
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
Go figure.
Cost cutting as its stock approaches double-digits.
So 6 months is surely enough time for a virtual couple to get married on Lively. So which one of you was it? Fess up.
Punch drunk, and without bail.
Anyone notice lately that the No. 1 search result for everything on Google seems to be Wikipedia? Now I just go to Wikipedia and search and cut out the middle man. The links at the bottom of Wiki articles also seem to be more relevant (when they aren't dead) than Google top results.
I've even been experimenting with MSN search and getting better results lately. Is the Goog stumbling?
This is very interesting - the ONLY Google tech I have installed at home is Lively, and last night my firewall went crazy asking permission for updates from Google Updater.
That was my first thought too --- that it's being scrapped because it's unpopular, but that it's unpopular because no one's heard of it.
In fact, it's windows-only (or at least, not cross-platform), so having just heard of it, I'm glad to forget it again. Maybe no one heard of it because no one thought it was worth mentioning.
I jumped on Lively when it was first announced, set up and furnished a room. The engine was slow but after it loaded it wasnt that bad. The application iteself always felt like an honest Beta, like there was something more to do before it was "real". Navigating around in Lively was a pain at best, users were never allowed to create and upload world items and the biggest issue was that once you finished outfitting a room, well, you had a chat room and that was about all Lively did.
I think they realized that they would either have to put some serious investment into this to make it worth it or drop it. Lively was an outside bet that just didnt pay off.
Google has finally had their "Bob". No big deal.
Now if they had let you put avatars into Google Street View and the rest of the Google Earth line-up, that would have been cool.
Google wants to 'prioritize [its] resources and focus more on [its] core search, ads and apps business.
You know what happens when management starts using words like "focus" and "core"...?
I do.
Lively was (is?) headed up by Niniane Wang, one of google's hotter engineering types. She used to work at microsoft games, and so was really pushing for a 3-D experience type thing. I personally never saw the point. But Niniane is something of a diva at google, and so she can basically do whatever she wants. Anyone cute, female and employed pre-IPO can pretty much do whatever they want no matter how pointless, come to think of it.
I tried Lively when it was an internal alpha, and just didn't understand the utility of it. I wasn't sure how they were going to monetize it, either. Or what it had to do with anything, really.
I did enjoy going to meetings Niniane held. Her being hot and all.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
In a related note I uninstalled Lively yesterday after realizing I would never log in to it again. Prescient? No. Just realistic.
I have yet to see how these things (like Second Life, Lively, etc) are any more than 3D games without the gaming content. No way do I see any reason to do use them for day-to-day computing tasks nor social interaction. We've got plenty of usable tools for that today which are far more flexible on both computer resources and computer usability.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Quick list
1. google's browser (windows only so far)
2. Lively - windows os required
3. Google earth buggy as heck in Ubuntu when i tried it.
I think google is good for search - but if they only release eye candy stuff for windows folk and then none of those internet explorer loving people use there stuff who cares.
Im sure the browser will work in oss, but windows was first, Google earth fell over so many times in Ubuntu i consider it a microsoft toy.
Never used Lively, could not without wine and that seems a fools errand.
Never heard of it. It was around that long eh?
Google Answers rocked. More than once I was willing to shell out $10-$20 bucks (plus tip) to find the answer to something my own Google-fu fails to uncover. (What's the full text of 'Nightingale Woman', Gene Roddenberry's ode to his WWII airplane?)
Have the company's growth fantasies involving the RMT purchase of virtual members been scrapped due to the financial crisis?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
The Livelyzens (Lively users) are coming together to appeal to Google to keep Lively alive. Lively is a great platform for interaction as well as creativity. It is easy to use, browser based, embeddable on webpages to bring a 3D experience right on your website. While Lively has been in beta and has limited capability in terms of the objects and avatars available, the Livelyzens have been able to come up with very creative ways to create art from what is available. All this in a "clean" 3D world thanks to Google's vigilance in getting rid of rooms with inappropriate content. More than anything, Lively has become a place to make friends for life â" from all over the world with wonderful people. Please visit our website http://livelyzens.com/ and participate in the Lively Machinima contest we are conducting to show the creative potential of Google Lively. Please also sign our online petition http://livelyzens.com/petition.aspx We request netizens to support us in reviving a wonderful 3D world that is a kid friendly and a creative space for art and interaction amongst adults.
Livelyzens have written a joint appeal letter to Google appealing to reconsider their decision to shutdown Lively. We hope that the company is gracious enough to reply to the Lively community. The joint appeal letter will be published shortly. In the meantime, see personal letters from Livelyzens on our website http://livelyzens.com/blog.aspx